Century-old Allentown church to honor Hungarian roots with special Mass

Monica Cabrera, Morning Call file photo

Parishioners at St. Stephen of Hungary worship in this file photo. The Allentown church is celebrating its centennial this year and will hold a Hungarian-language Mass on Saturday, April 25.

Parishioners at St. Stephen of Hungary worship in this file photo. The Allentown church is celebrating its centennial this year and will hold a Hungarian-language Mass on Saturday, April 25. (Monica Cabrera, Morning Call file photo)

If it's rusty, you can brush up Saturday, when St. Stephen of Hungary Catholic Church in Allentown will celebrate Mass at 4 p.m. in the Hungarian language.

It's part of the "centenáriumi ünnep a Szent István-templom." That's Magyar for "centenary celebration of St. Stephen's Church."

"Years ago Magyar was the standard for preaching in the parish," said St. Stephen's pastor, the Rev. William Seifert.

Seifert is conversant in a number of languages but he will turn the duty of celebrating Mass over to a Hungarian priest from Holy Family Parish in New Brunswick, N.J., home to a major Hungarian community.

The parish's choir will be on hand to provide music, and a representative of the Hungarian consulate in New York is scheduled to attend.

"We have at least 120 people, if not more, coming," said Elaine Bokanyi, a parishioner of 47 years who is overseeing the celebration and other events that will culminate with an Oct. 25 Mass with Allentown Bishop John O. Barres.

"It's going to be a huge event for us," Bokanyi said. "We're so thrilled to get all the Hungarians in the area together."

The Mass is open to the public, but the dinner afterward in the church hall is sold out, she added.The church's usual 4:30 vigil Mass won't be held.

St. Stephen's was founded in 1915, when Hungarian immigrants held services in the basement of Sacred Heart Church in the city while they raised money for a parish of their own.

The cornerstone for the first St. Stephen's church was laid in 1917. In 1925, the Rev. Ladislaus Nagy became pastor and oversaw the growth of the parish, which built a new church — the current building — in the mid-1950s.

At the dedication Mass, two days before Christmas in 1956, Nagy thanked parishioners and guests for realizing his dream of a new church. Then, in a stunning and heartbreaking end to his three-decade ministry, he collapsed and died.

In the years after the dedication, the church had a major infusion of parishioners as Hungarians fled their homeland after the Soviet Union crushed a 1956 uprising there.

"Their landing was kind of eventful because they came over not knowing the language, and penniless," Seifert said. "But they weren't afraid of working and they were industrious…Engineering, Bethlehem Steel, Mack Truck — all those kinds of jobs many were qualified for, and they excelled at."

These days, St. Stephen's isn't nearly as big or busy as it used to be. Like many city parishes, it lost members to the suburbs and to the general decline in churchgoing over recent decades. Some years ago the Diocese of Allentown considered closing and selling it.

Instead, it continues to serve the Hungarian congregation and has become the diocesan center for the traditional Latin Mass community, which celebrates the Extraordinary Form — the Mass as it was said before the changes of the Second Vatican Council.

Its Hungarian roots are indelible, however. Much of the church's fundraising is tied to the sale of Hungarian foods. And churchgoers can hear Magyar there once a week as Julius Kovacs, the church's organist for an extraordinary seven decades, sings a Hungarian hymn after communion at the Saturday vigil Mass.